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The ethanol impetus

Distilleries have diversified from molasses to a range of feedstocks,
enabling blending rates with petrol to more than double to 11.75% in past
five years. Modi govt’s differential pricing policy for ethanol has helped.

Written by Harish Damodaran Follow

Updated: July 24, 2023 10:26 IST

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The molasses, containing 50%-plus sugar, yields 290-320 litres per tonne.

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 00:00 1x 1.5x 1.8x

India’s ethanol production programme has come a long way in the past five years,
both in terms of the quantities supplied by sugar mills/distilleries to oil marketing
companies (OMCs) and the raw material used — from cane molasses and juice to
rice, damaged grains, maize and, down the line, millets.

Ethanol is basically 99.9% pure alcohol that can be blended with petrol. It is
different from the 94% rectified spirit having applications in paints,
pharmaceuticals, personal care products and other industries, and 96% extra
neutral alcohol that goes to make potable liquor.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at a G20 Energy Ministers’ meet on Saturday (July
22), said that India has rolled out 20% ethanol-blended petrol this year and aims to
“cover the entire country by 2025”.

Also Read | Why has Centre advanced its 20% ethanol blending target by five
years?

Cane options

Till 2017-18 (December-November supply year), sugar mills produced ethanol only
from ‘C-heavy’ molasses. The cane they crush typically has 13.5-14% TFS or total
fermentable sugars content. Around 11.5% of it is recovered from the juice as
sugar, with the uncrystallised, non-recoverable 2-2.5% TFS going into so-called C-
heavy molasses. Every one tonne of C-heavy molasses, containing 40-45% sugar,
gives 220-225 litres of ethanol.

But mills, instead of extracting the maximum recoverable 11.5%, can produce 9.5-
10% sugar and divert the extra 1.5-2% TFS to an earlier ‘B-heavy’ stage molasses.
This molasses, containing 50%-plus sugar, yields 290-320 litres per tonne.

A third route is not to produce any sugar and ferment the entire 13.5-14% TFS into
ethanol. From crushing one tonne of cane, 80-81 litres of ethanol can thus be
obtained, as against 20-21 litres and 10-11 litres through the B-heavy and C-heavy
routes respectively.

Feedstocks diversification

The table shows ethanol supplies by mills/distilleries to OMCs soaring from a mere
38 crore litres in 2013-14 to an estimated 559 crore in 2022-23. Moreover, there has
been a significant diversification of feedstocks from C-heavy to not only B-heavy
molasses and direct sugarcane juice, but even rice and other foodgrains.

Ethanol yields from grains are actually higher than from molasses. One tonne of
rice can produce 450-480 litres of ethanol, while it is 450-460 litres from
broken/damaged grains, 380-400 litres from maize, 385-400 litres from jowar
(sorghum) and 365-380 litres from bajra and other millets. The yields are linked to
starch content: 68-72% in rice, 58-62% in maize and jowar, and 56-58% in other
millets.

However, though more ethanol can be produced from grains than molasses, the
process is longer. The starch in the grain has to first be converted into sucrose and
simpler sugars (glucose and fructose), before their fermentation into ethanol by
using yeast (saccharomyces cerevisiae). Molasses already contains sucrose, glucose
and fructose.

Year-round production

Some leading sugar companies — including Triveni Engineering & Industries Ltd,
DCM Shriram and Dhampur Sugar Mills — have installed distilleries with the
flexibility to operate on multiple feedstocks and, hence, round the year.

Triveni Engineering’s 200 kilo-litres-per-day (KLPD) distillery at Milak Narayanpur

in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur district can use B-heavy molasses from its 6,000 tonnes-
cane-per-day sugar mill during the crushing season from November to April.
During the off-season from May to October, it is able to run on grain, mainly
surplus and broken rice sourced from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and open
market.

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The multi-feed distillery, commissioned in April 2022, has three 2,800-tonnes silos
for storing grain, besides facilities for milling into flour, liquefaction (converting
starch into glucose and fructose), fermentation (to 15% alcohol), distillation (to 94%
spirit) and dehydration (to 99.9% ethanol).

“India’s ethanol programme is no longer reliant on a single feedstock or crop.

Earlier, it was molasses and cane. Today, it’s also rice, maize and other grains.
Diversification of feedstocks will minimise supply fluctuations and price volatility
on account of any one crop,” said Tarun Sawhney, vice chairman of Triveni
Engineering, which has increased its total distillery capacity from 320 KLPD to 660
KLPD since 2021-22 and plans to further expand to 1,110 KLPD by 2024-25.

The boost

The flexibility and incentive for mills/distilleries to use multiple feedstocks has
largely come from the Modi government’s policy of differential pricing. Till 2017-18,
the OMCs were paying a uniform price for ethanol produced from any feedstocks.

In Explained | The dramatic transformation of India’s oil trade with Russia, in

seven charts

From 2018-19, the Modi government began fixing higher prices for ethanol
produced from B-heavy molasses and whole sugarcane juice/syrup. The idea was to
compensate mills for revenues foregone from reduced/nil production of sugar.

For the 2022-23 supply year, the ex-distillery price of ethanol payable by OMCs has
been set at Rs 49.41/litre from C-heavy molasses, Rs 60.73/litre from B-heavy
molasses, Rs 65.61/litre from sugarcane juice/syrup, Rs 55.54/litre from
broken/damaged grains, Rs 56.35/litre from maize and Rs 58.50/litre from surplus
FCI rice.

The stimulus that this has given to ethanol production can be seen from its all-India
average blending with petrol touching 11.75% in 2022-23, as against 1.6% in 2013-14
(chart).

The incorporation of new feedstocks for ethanol production can create new
demand for grains. Uttar Pradesh is a major sugarcane grower, just as Bihar is in
maize. If their farmers were to supply rice, barley and millets as well to distilleries,
these two states could well “fuel India” the way Punjab, Haryana or Madhya
Pradesh “feed India”.

The current year might be an exception, with likely pressure on domestic

availability/stocks of cereals and sugar from El Niño-induced monsoon
uncertainties. While the Modi government has already banned exports of wheat,
sugar and non-parboiled non-basmati rice, it hasn’t put any brakes so far on the
ethanol blending programme.

Byproduct benefits

Distilleries are often synonymous with pollution. The liquid effluent (spent wash)
generated during alcohol production can pose serious environmental problems, if
discharged without proper treatment.

But the new molasses-based distilleries have MEE (multi effect evaporator) units,
where the spent wash is concentrated to about 60% solids. The concentrated wash
is used as a boiler fuel along with bagasse (the fibre remaining after crushing
sugarcane) in 70:30 ratio. The resultant ash coming out from the incineration boiler
in dry form contains up to 28% potash, which can be used as fertiliser.

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The spent wash from grain distilleries similarly goes into a decanter centrifuge,
which separates the liquid from the solid. This is followed by concentrating the
liquid in MEE units and drying it along with the wet cake from the decanter. The
resultant by-product, DDGS or distillers’ dried grain with solubles, is sold as animal
feed.

© The Indian Express (P) Ltd

First published on: 24-07-2023 at 07:05 IST

TAGS: Ethanol Explained Economics Express Premium

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